A $13.3 million federal grant awarded
to the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center will go to help homeless
gay teens.
The grant, awarded by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, will be used to launch a
five-year intervention program that helps gay kids in foster care,
juvenile detention centers or in their family homes where they may
experience rejection before they wind up on the streets.
Many teens turn to living on the
streets or to prostitution after being rejected by their families for
being gay or after being forced to leave the foster system at the age
of 18.
“LGBTQ youth who aren't living on the
streets because of a hostile home environment are often in the foster
care system,” Lorri Jean, CEO of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center,
said.
“Many are rejected by foster parents
and move from home to home or are considered unadoptable and live in
overburdened group homes. In either case, they're more likely to
turn to drugs and crime, engage in unprotected sex, or commit suicide
– and when they age out of the system at 18, they're coming to us
homeless.”
Jean said the grant would be used to
create a model program that would “protect the health and
well-being of LGBTQ foster youth.”